Malicious chuckling over the split between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in
the R.S.D.L.P, in general and over the sharp struggle at the London Congress in
particular has become a regular feature of the bourgeois press. No one thinks
of studying the differences of opinion, of analysing the two tendencies, of
acquainting the reading public with the history of the split and with the nature
of the differences between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. The publicists of
Rech and Tovarishch—the Vergezhskys, the E. K.’s, the
Pereyaslavskys, and other
penny a-liners[1]
simply fasten on all kinds of rumours, serve up “piquant”
details of “scandals” for blasé society gossips, and go
out of their way to addle people’s minds with trashy anecdotes about
our struggle.

This genre of vulgar scoffing is being taken up, too, by the
Socialist-Revolutionaries. The editorial in
Znamya Truda,[4]
No. 6, drags out Cherevanin’s story about the incident of hysteria at
the London Congress, sniggers at the expenditure of “tens of
thousands”, and smacks its lips at “the pretty picture of the
internal state of Russian Social-Democracy at the present
moment”. With the liberals such introductions are preliminaries to
lauding the opportunists à la Plekhanov; with the
Socialist-Revolutionaries they are the preliminaries to a severe criticism
of them (the Socialist-Revolutionaries are repeating now the
arguments of the revolutionary Social-Democrats against a labour congress!
They have bethought themselves!). But both of them gloat over the hard
struggle in the Social-Democratic ranks.
We shall say a few words about the liberal heroes of this crusade before we deal
in detail with the Socialist-Revolutionary heroes of “the struggle
against opportunism”.

The liberals sneer at the struggle within Social-Democracy in order to cover up
their systematic deception of the public in regard to the Cadet
Party. It is a thorough going deception, and the struggle among the Cadets them
selves and their negotiations with the, authorities are systematically
concealed. Everyone knows that the Left Cadets rebuke the Right. Everyone knows
that Milyukov, Struve & Co. called at the ante-rooms of the Stolypins. But
the exact facts are kept hidden. Differences have been glossed over and not a
word has been said of the disputes of the Struve gentry with the Left
Cadets. There are no records of the proceedings of the Cadet congresses. The
liberals issue no figures of their party membership either as a whole or by
organisations. The tendency of the different committees is unknown. Nothing but
darkness, nothing but the official lies of Rech, nothing but attempts
to fool democracy by those on conversational terms with ministers—that is
what the party of Constitutional-Democrats is. Lawyers and professors, who make
their career by parliamentarism, hypocritically condemn the underground
struggle and praise open activity by parties while actually flouting the
democratic principle of publicity and concealing from the public the different
political tendencies with in their party. It needs the short-sightedness of a
Plekhanov, who goes down on his knees before Milyukov, not to be able to see
this gross dirty deception of democracy by the Cadets,. a deception touched up
with a gloss of culture.

And what about the Socialist-Revolutionaries? Are they doing their duty as
honest democrats (we do not say as socialists, for that cannot be said
of them), the duty of giving the people a clear and truthful account of
the struggle of the different political tendencies among those who seek to lead
the people?

The December Congress of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries in 1905 was the
first and only one to publish minutes of the proceedings. Mr. Tuchkin, a
delegate of the Central Organ, exclaims: “The Social-Democrats were at
one time convinced, apparently quite sincerely, that the advent of political
liberties would spell political death to our party.... The epoch of liberties
has proved the reverse” (p. 28 of the supplement to the Minutes). You
don’t really mean that, Mr. Tuchkin, do you? Is that what the epoch of
liberties proved? Is that what the actual policy of the party of
Socialist-Revolutionaries proved in 1905? In 1906? In 1907?

In the minutes of the Congress of the Socialist-Revolutionaries
(December 1905, published in 1906/) we read that after October
17 a writers’ group, which had a voice but no vote at this Congress,
“urged the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionaries to
organise a legal party” (p. 49 of the Minutes; further quotations are
from the same source). The Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionaries
“was asked to set up not a legal organisation of the Party of
Socialist-Revolutionaries, but a special parallel Popular Socialist
Party” (51). The Central Committee refused and referred the question
to the Congress. The Congress rejected the motion of the Popular
Socialists by a majority of all against one with seven abstentions
(66). “Is it conceivable to be in two parallel parties?” cried
Mr. Tuchkin, beating his breast (p. 61). And Mr. Shevich hinted at the Popular
Socialists’ kinship with the liberals, so that the Popular Socialist
Mr. Rozhdestvensky began to lose his equanimity (p. 59) and avowed that
“no one has the right” to call them
“semi-liberals”
(59).[2]

Such are the facts. In 1905, the Socialist-Revolutionaries broke with
the “semi-liberal” Popular Socialists. But did they?

In 1905, a powerful means for the party openly to influence the masses was the
press. During the October “days of liberty” the
Socialist-Revolutionaries ran a newspaper in a bloc with the Popular
Socialists, prior to the December Congress, it is true. Formally
the Socialist-Revolutionaries
are right on this point. in reality, during the period of the greatest
liberties, the period of most direct influence upon the masses, they
concealed from the public the existence of two different
tendencies within the party. The differences of opinion were as great as
those within the Social-Democratic ranks, but the Social-Democrats tried to
clarify them, whereas the Socialist-Revolutionaries tried diplomatically to
conceal them. Such are the facts of 1905.

Now take 1906. The First-Duma period of “small liberties”. The
socialist newspapers are revived. The Socialist-Revolutionaries are again
in a bloc with the Popular Socialists, and they have a joint newspaper. No
wonder the break with the “semi-liberals” at the congress was a
diplomatic one: if you like—a break, or if you like—no break! The
proposal was rejected, the idea of “being in two parallel parties”
was ridiculed, and ... and they went on sitting side by side in two parties,
reverently exclaiming: We thank thee, 0 Lord, that we are not as those
Social-Democrats who fight one .another! Such are the facts. Both periods of
the free press in Russia were marked by the So-cialist-Revolutionaries
aligning themselves with the Popular Socialists and concealing from democracy
by deception (“diplomacy”) the two profoundly divergent tendencies
within their party.

Now take 1907. After the First Duma the Popular Socialists formally organised
their own party. That was inevitable, since in the First Duma, in the first
address of the parties to the peasant electors all over Russia, the
Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries came forward with
different agrarian plans (the Bills of the 104 and the 33). The Popular
Socialists defeated the Socialist-Revolutionaries by securing three
times as many signatures of the Trudovik deputies to their plan, to their
agrarian programme. And this programme, as the Socialist-Revolutionary Vikhlyaev
admitted (Nasha Mysl, Collection, No. 1, St. Petersburg, 1907, article:
“The Popular Socialist Party and the Agrarian Question”)
“similarly” with the law of November 9, 1906,
“arrives at negation of the basic principle of communal land
tenure”. This programme legalises “the manifestations of selfish
individualism” (p. 89 of Mr. Vikhlyaev’s article),
“pollutes the broad ideological stream withindividualist mud” (p. 91 of the same article), and embarks
upon “the path of encouraging individualist and egoistic
tendencies among the masses” (ibid., p. 93).

Clear enough, it would seem? The overwhelming majority of peasant
deputies displayed bourgeois individualism. The S.R.’s first address to
the peasant electors of all Russia strikingly confirmed the theory of the
Social-Democrats by virtually converting the S.R.’s into the extreme Left wing
of the petty-bourgeois democrats.

But, perhaps the S.R.’s, after the Popular Socialists had separated from them
and won the Trudovik group over to their programme, definitely dissociated
themselves from them? They did not. The elections to the Second Duma in
St. Petersburg proved the reverse. Blocs with the Cadets were then the greatest
manifestation of socialist opportunism. The Black-Hundred danger was a fiction
covering up the policy of truckling to the liberals. The Cadet press
revealed this very clearly by stressing the “moderation” of the
Mensheviks and Popular Socialists. How did the S. R. s behave? Our
“revolutionaries” formed a bloc with the Popular Socialists and the
Trudoviks; the terms of this bloc were concealed from the public. Our
revolutionaries trailed after the Cadets, just like the Mensheviks. The
S.R. spokesmen proposed a bloc to the Cadets (the meeting of January 18,
1907. See N. Lenin’s pamphlet When You Hear the Judgement of a
Fool..., St. Petersburg,
January 15, 1907,[3]
in which it is established that the S.R.’s behaved in a politically
dishonest manner in the question of agreements by negotiating
simultaneously with the Social-Democrats, who had declared war on the
Cadets on January 7, 1907, and with the Cadets). The S.R.’s found
themselves in the Left bloc against their will, owing to the
Cadets’ refusal.

Thus, after a complete break with the Popular Socialists the S.R.’s in
actual fact pursued the policy of the Popular Socialists and Mensheviks,
i. e., the opportunists. Their “advantage” consists in concealing
from the public the motives of this policy and the currents within their party.

The extraordinary Congress of the S.R. Party in February 1907 not
only failed to raise this question of blocs with the Cadets, not only
failed to assess the significance of such a policy, but, on the contrary,
confirmed it! We would remind the reader of G.A. Gershuni’s
speech at that Congress, which at that time Rech lauded in exactly
the same way as it always lauds Plekhanov. Gershuni said that he adhered to
his “old opinion: the Cadets so far are not our enemies” (p. 11
of the pamphlet: “Speech by G. A. Gershuni at the Extraordinary
Congress of the S. R. Party”, 1907, pp. 1-15, with the party motto of
the S.R.’s: “In struggle you will win your
rights”). Gershuni warned against mutual struggle within the
opposition: “Will not the people lose faith in the very possibility
of government by means of a popular representative assembly”
(ibid.). Obviously, it was in the spirit of this Cadet-lover that the
Congress of the S.R.’s adopted a resolution, which stated, among
other things:

“The Congress holds that a sharp party alignment of groups within
the Duma, with isolated action by each separate group and acute inter-group
struggle, could completely paralyse the activities of the oppositional
majority and, thereby discredit the very idea of popular representation in
the eyes of the working classes” (Partiiniye Izvestia of the
S.R. Party, No. 6, March 8, 1907).

This is the sheerest opportunism, worse than our Menshevism. Gershuni
in a slightly more clumsy way made the Congress repeat
Plekhanovism. And the entire activity of the S.R. Duma group
reflected this spirit of Cadet tactics of concern for the unity of the
national opposition. The only difference between the
Social-Democrat Plekhanov and the Socialist-Revolutionary Gershuni is that
the former is a member of a party that does not cover up such decadence,
but exposes and fights against it, while the latter is a member of a party
in which all tactical principles and theoretical views are muddled and
hidden from the eyes of the public by a thick screen of parochial
diplomacy. “Not to wash one’s dirty linen in public” is a
thing the S.R.’s are adept at. The trouble is they have nothing to
show in public but dirty linen. They could not tell the whole truth about
their relations with the Popular Socialists in 1905, 1906, or 1907. They
cannot disclose how a party—not a circle, but, a
party—can
one day adopt an ultra-opportunist resolution by 67 votes to 1, and the next
day exhaust themselves shouting “revolutionary” cries.

No, gentlemen “judges”, we do not envy you your formal
right to rejoice at the sharp struggle and splits within the ranks of
Social-Democracy. No doubt, there is much in this struggle that is to be
deplored. Without a doubt, there is much in these splits that is disastrous
to the cause of socialism. Nevertheless, not for a single minute would we
care to barter this heavy truth for your “light” lie. Our
Party’s serious illness is the growing pains of a mass
party. For there can be no mass party, no party of a class, without full
clarity of essential shadings, without an open struggle between various
tendencies, without informing the masses as to which leaders and
which organisations of the Party are pursuing this or that line. Without
this, a party worthy of the name cannot be built, and we are
building it. We have succeeded in putting the views of our two
currents truthfully, clearly, and distinctly before everyone. Personal
bitterness, factional squabbles and strife, scandals, and splits—all
these are trivial in comparison with the fact that the experience of
two tactics is actually teaching a lesson to the proletarian
masses, is actually teaching a lesson to everyone who is capable of taking
an intelligent interest in politics. Our quarrels and splits will be
forgotten. Our tactical principles, sharpened and tempered, will go down as
corner stones in the history of the working-class movement and socialism in
Russia. Years will pass, perhaps decades, and the influence of one or the
other tendency will be traced in a hundred practical questions of different
kinds. Both the working class of Russia and the whole people know
whom they are dealing with in the case of Bolshevism or Menshevism.

Do they know the Cadets? The entire history of the Cadet Party is one of sheer
political jugglery that keeps silent about what matters most and whose one and
everlasting concern is to keep the truth hidden at all costs.

Do they know the Socialist-Revolutionaries? Will the S.R.’s tomorrow
again enter into a bloc with the Social-Cadets? Are they not in that bloc
today? Do they dissociate themselves from the “individualist
mud” of the Trudoviks
or are they filling their party more and more with this mud? Do they still
adhere to the theory of unity of the national opposition? Did they adopt
that theory only yesterday? Will they abandon it tomorrow for a few weeks?
No one knows. The S.R.’s themselves do not know it, because the entire
history of their party is one of systematically and continuously
obscuring, confusing, and glossing over their differences by means of
words, phrases and still more phrases.

Why is that? It is not because the S.R.’s are bourgeois careerists like the
Cadets. No, their sincerity, as a circle, cannot be doubted. Their
trouble is that it is impossible for them to create a mass party, impossible for
them to become the party of a class. The objective position is such
that they have to be merely a wing of peasant democracy, an
unindependent, unequal appendage, a “subgroup” of the Trudoviks, and
not a self-contained whole. The period of storm and stress did not help the
S.R.’s to rise to their full stature. It threw them into the clutching arms of
the Popular Socialists, a clutch so strong that not even a split can unlock
them. The period of the counter-revolutionary war did not strengthen their
connection with definite social strata—it merely gave rise to new
waverings and vacillations (which the S.R.’s are now trying hard to conceal)
about the socialist nature of the muzhik. And today, on reading the passionate
articles of Znamya Truda about the heroes of S. R. terrorism, one
cannot help saying to oneself: your terrorism, gentlemen, is not the outcome of
your revolutionism. Your revolutionism is confined to terrorism.

Notes

[2]Mr. Shevich retreated somewhat in face of this resentment on
the part of a Popular Socialist who had lost his equanimity and “corrected
himself”—p. 63—saying, “by way of personal [!!]
explanation”:“I had no intention of suggesting that the speaker
was a member of the liberal party”. —Lenin